An Unintended but Pleasant Surprise for Israel

Although Barak Hussein Obama’s tenure as President of the United States has ended and John Kerry is no longer the U.S. Secretary of State, Israel’s woes on the world’s stage are not over. However, under the new Trump administration, Israel will hopefully once again find they have a true and loyal friend in the United States.

Obama and Kerry worked hard in their final hours of power to make Israel’s battle at the United Nations and elsewhere an even tougher challenge for the Jewish state. The biased United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution passed on December 23rd was quietly in the works for a long time. Among many other anti-Israel provisions, the document condemns Israeli settlements as “illegal and dangerously imperiling the viability of the two-state solution.” It also states that Israel does not own the Western Wall, the Temple Mount, any part of the West Bank and not a square inch of East Jerusalem. Furthermore, the resolution called on states that do business with Israel “to distinguish between the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967” which paves the way for renewed Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns against Israel. The United States broke with precedent by failing to veto the resolution which it has historically done whenever a proposed resolution was determined to be unfairly slanted against Israel. Obama’s failure to exercise his veto gave Israel’s enemies hope that the Paris conference would have relevance and it did but, surprisingly, it was in favor of Israel. All were taken by surprise when Britain broke ranks with Europe by refusing to join the 70 other nations in attendance at the Paris conference which signed a statement preserving the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Australia also refused to sign.
The French-sponsored talks on the two-state solution were designed to send a message to now President Donald Trump that only a two-state solution will solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict … just in case Team Trump should get the idea to pursue a different approach. Clearly globalist anti-Israel strategists were hard at work pushing their agendas. While some feared, others were hopeful, that the Paris conference would produce a document to be brought to the Security Council for an immediate vote; a document that would establish parameters for future talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

But that’s not all the anti-Israel strategists had been planning. Sweden and its virulently anti-Israel Foreign Minister Margot Wallström, bribed their way to a two-year nonpermanent seat on the Security Council perfectly timed to happen prior to Obama leaving office. This is no coincidence.

For months, Sweden worked assiduously behind the scenes, inviting U.N. ambassadors from poor and developing African countries to Stockholm. Sweden wooed the ambassadors with luxury to the tune of 27 million SEK (nearly $3 million), while wheeling, dealing and lobbying for their U.N. votes. The money was siphoned from its public budget for aid to poor and undeveloped countries. According to Swedish press reports, Sweden also sent representatives to Africa to speak with Ethiopia’s prime minister, who promised to support Sweden’s candidacy for the Security Council seat in return for Sweden’s vote for him as director general of UNESCO this year. “It was a cover operation for what this is really about, namely to buy votes,” a source told a Swedish human rights publication. “The real aim and scope of the operation was kept secret, and the different steps of the campaign were not recorded.” Sweden supports limiting the use of the veto by permanent Security Council members—such as the United States—“in situations where mass atrocity crimes have been, or risk being, committed.”

Considering France’s record of anti-Semitism and its BDS-tainted labeling of goods produced in Israeli settlements, it should be no surprise that in December, France sent a security delegation to the United States for counterterrorism training by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). If you blinked, I understand. The Department of Homeland Security Community Engagement Office in Tampa, and the Obama State Department arranged for CAIR’s Florida chapter to train the French police and counter-terrorism personnel. The program blatantly conflicts with the FBI policy of noncooperation with CAIR (except for criminal investigations) due to evidence linking its executives to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. According to the Investigative Project on Terrorism, the thrust of the Tampa training was to discourage counterterror activities within Muslim communities, which CAIR claims undermine Muslims’ civil liberties.

You may wonder why democratic France, whose citizens have suffered a string of devastating terror attacks by Muslim extremists in the past two years, would seek security and counter-terrorism training from a Muslim group with proven terrorist ties. Why not call on Israel, which stood in solidarity with France after the attacks, and which offers counter-terrorism expertise? France and the EU face barbarians not only at the gates, but also in the palais, marketplace, sports arena and workplace. By embracing or failing to acknowledge groups with terrorist ties and suspect agendas, the EU could be courting disaster. There’s more to this than naiveté.

CAIR officials enjoyed close relations with the Obama Administration, and DHS/State Department coordination with CAIR is not new. According to the Investigative Project on Terrorism, DHS has funneled anti-terrorism funds allocated by Congress to the group, including a 2015 DHS sub-grant. That same year, the State Department discussed with CAIR officials “the need … to challenge [alleged] aggressive Israeli actions targeting the Al Aqsa mosque compound, one of the holiest sites in Islam.” Reports also have surfaced of DHS training procedures that would single out U.S. Jews and Christians as “domestic terrorists” in the event of martial law.

For America and Israel to maintain free, democratic societies, threats to derail our democracies and way of life must be exposed and confronted. As Donald Trump begins his service as President of the United States, it would be prudent for those who value freedom and democracy to encourage him as well as the U.S. Congress to set fresh foreign policy initiatives that support America’s ally Israel and investigate DHS and State Department ties to Muslim extremists. While it appears the United States is off to a good start with an Israel-friendly administration in Washington D.C., there are many holes in this dike and the more eyes watching the better.